Magician or Shaman
 

Who’s the better at soloing classic content?

Mage, but only if you can keep the fights 1 vs 1. So basically the answer is "it depends". That's a big caveat, especially if you plan to solo in any dungeons.

Yeah, I was thinking for solo in dungeons.

While there might be few things a mage can theoretically kill in a dungeon that a shaman can't, there is going to be far more camps and such that a mage is just not going to be able to break and hence won't be able to maintain the 1 vs 1. Overall if you want to dungeon dive, you are probably better off with shaman, and certainly so once kunark arrive.

I was also thinking the shaman’s pet isn’t that much worse than a magicians @ 49 when you factor in buffs and slow

Oh i wouldn't go that far, certainly not in vanilla time frame. Mages have hastes for their pets at least as good as anything the shaman will be doing, and often times better haste, and their pets can DW,. DW on 40+ mobs usually increases the damage about 60-70%. Mage pets are somewhee around 5 levels higher on average than the shaman pets, too, which has a big impact on your pets ability to land hits in the first place(and taunt). And mages don't get slow but they get a 24 point damage shield. Also generally the mage pets have more HP than the dog, too.

The big issue with mages in dungeons is lack of root or CC. If you have root nets it opens up some possibilities. Shamans are better overall I'd say though.

I'd side with shams too. They're far from overpowering in a solo dungeon sense though. Slow makes tanking (for pet or the sham) a lot easier, root and dots are nice, you have some mana regen through canni, you can handle a tough fight slowly with malo and dots and root and pet.

But you're still too straightforward to shine. It's hard to break camps of 3+. You can't reliably interrupt spellcasters. You rely on ivu pots for undead dungeons. You have to fight to get past stuff that sees invis. No mem blur besides root+camp. No long root until kunark.

You have a few tricks like a pet occupying 3 mobs while you throw roots, or pet eating a HT, or malo+root being pretty reliable, but you lack the finesse a chanter or necro has in tight spaces vs multi-mob pulls.

High effort, micromanaging dots and multiple buffs/debuffs = Shaman

Send pet, sit down and watch it kill stuff = Magician

Also consider that all Shaman races are either evil or terribly isolated so unless you want to go on a tedious pilgrimage home every 4 levels I advise off Shaman. Shammy is best in groups but when it comes to solo you'll want to crush your own skull with a bat less often while playing Magician than a ghetto cleric/necromancer hybrid.

It's more like send pet, then spam nukes ... unless you're killing very low blues or high greens.

As a Shaman player who now plays a Mage, I've been very disappointed with how the class isn't half as lazy as everyone else makes it out to be. I'm still enjoying it, and I can't say it's as hard as playing Shaman ... but it's definitely not as lazy as I'd hoped.